by Jim Laughter
“Mr. Toolie?”
Toolie didn’t say anything to the two men standing in the doorway. Instead, he motioned for them to enter and sit in chairs opposite his desk. He didn’t introduce himself, shake their hands, or offer any pleasantries; no coffee or water or anything else to drink. He just watched them sit down in the chairs and wait for him to speak.
After a moment, Toolie leaned back in his chair and pushed his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose. He appeared to be in his late forties to middle fifties with a sprinkling of gray hair in his temples. His face was clean shaven but Benjamin could see a touch of gray/black stubble. The man studied them for a moment or two before saying anything.
“You the new drivers?”
“Yes sir,” they answered together.
He opened two file folders and examined their contents. “Says here you’re the new alternate drivers for the secure package.”
“Yes sir.”
Toolie studied the two men again. He didn’t like it one bit that they’d been thrust into his detail without his consent. He’d been motorcade supervisor for ten years and knew every member of the detail. He’d hired most of them so he knew their strengths and weaknesses, their backgrounds, where they’d come from, their work history; everything.
But he didn’t know these men. He hadn’t spoken to either of them or interviewed them. All he knew was he’d received orders from higher up to integrate them into his motorcade.
“Your credentials look ok,” he said to Benjamin. “Drove for the senator from Oklahoma, did you?”
“Yes sir. Three years, sir,” Benjamin lied.
Something checked his spirit. He’d been taught all his life that lying was a sin and he hated to go against his Christian upbringing. He could feel his New Testament in his jacket pocket and he recalled a scripture his father quoted to him all through his youth that said all liars have their place in the lake of fire. But this was real life, not Sunday School. The lives of women across the country hung in the balance if they weren’t able to complete this mission. Of course, their own lives could just as easily be in danger.
Morris had admonished both he and Cooper to memorize every detail of their new portfolios. Although they’d be using their own names, every other aspect of their lives would be different. No one could know they were undercover FBI agents. If the killer was a member of the President’s security staff, any failure to maintain absolute secrecy could result in one or both of them ending up dead.
“You’re a little young to be an executive chauffeur, wouldn’t you say?”
“My father and the senator are old friends. He hired me to drive for him so I could attend William and Mary.”
“College? You’re in college?”
“Yes sir. Master’s program. Political Science. But I’m taking a year off from the program to get my financials together.”
“So why do you want to drive for the President?”
Benjamin watched the man to determine if he’d seen through their deceitful credentials. If so, they might have to take him into their confidence. If not, there would be no reason to share the true reason for their being here.
“The senator has taken ill and is retiring back home,” he said. “I’m not ready to leave yet. He called someone here at the White House and got me this job. I thought it might give me an inside track to meet people and network for the next step in my career.”
“Politics and favoritism,” Bob Toolie said. “They go hand-in-hand in this town.”
“Yes sir.”
Toolie turned his attention to Cooper. “So what’s your story?”
“My story, sir?”
Toolie nodded.
“Nothing special, sir,” Cooper said. “I’ve been driving for the Royal Limousine Services in Los Angeles since college. I put in for this job a couple years ago. Got a call last week that I’d been hired, so here I am. Nothing special.”
“Royal Limo?”
“Yes sir.”
“Doing what, driving movie stars and the Kardashian sisters? Crap like that?”
“Sometimes, sir,” Cooper answered. “But mostly executives and high level politicians.”
“Politicians?”
“Yes sir,” Cooper said. “Senators and state officials mostly. I drove the Pope when he came to town a few years ago, stuff like that.”
He examined Cooper’s file again. “It says here you’re licensed for the LTC Stretch 120.”
“Yes sir.”
“I assume you are too since that’s what they drive on Capitol Hill,” he said to Benjamin.
“Yes sir.”
“Well, we don’t drive the 120 here,” he said. “We use Cadillac, not Lincoln.”
Benjamin and Cooper exchanged glances. Was Toolie trying to tell them they weren’t qualified to drive the secure package, or was he saying he didn’t trust them? Either way, they had to get onto the detail if they hoped to complete their mission.
“You say you applied a couple of years ago. I never saw your application, Cooper. Matter of fact, I never saw either of your applications, and I do the hiring and firing around here for the motorcade.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Mr. Toolie,” Cooper said. “I’m just a little fish in a big pond.”
He looked Benjamin and Cooper up and down. “You men know each other? You friends or something?”
Both men shook their heads.
“Never met before today, sir,” Cooper answered.
“But you showed up here at the same time.”
“Yes sir,” Benjamin said. “We met at HR and rode over together.”
Toolie closed the file folders and tossed them into a basket on his desk. He pressed an intercom button and a moment later a stout black man in mechanics overalls entered the office.
“Take these men over and get them situated, Jake,” he said to the mechanic. “We leave Monday.”
“If you say so,” Jake drawled. “Did you get the departure schedule?”
Benjamin could tell by Jake’s manner of speech and easy-going attitude that he had a country background, most likely raised somewhere in the south or mid-west.
Toolie looked up at Jake as if to tell the man to just do what he’d been told.
“You know that’s classified,” he said instead.
The motorcade would arrive in San Francisco at least two hours ahead of Air Force One anyhow, and they’d be briefed on the route and any contingencies on the plane on the way out.
Benjamin had no disillusions that they’d be riding on the executive jet. Instead, they’d travel on the C-17 transport plane along with the vehicles and the rest of the motorcade staff. Only the President, his security detail, the press corps, and any cabinet members traveling with him would travel on Air Force One. The first family would not go on this trip since it was scheduled to be a quick two-day turn around.
“Yeah, I know,” Jake answered, a smile crossing his lips. “Just thought I’d see if you was paying attention.”
Cooper and Benjamin exchanged knowing glances. They were both thinking the same thought.
A black man on the motorcade. Good a place to start as any.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The 18-year old high school senior sat on the floor in the dark room, his knees pulled up to his chin as if protecting himself from a hostile force. There was no reason he should be afraid, but he was.
He didn’t know why he feared the night since he’d lived most of his life in dark and dirty places. There was just something about this particular room that filled him with dread. Had he been here before? Could that be the reason? Was this one of the many places his mother had brought him when he was a child? Had he been hurt in this place and his psyche was trying to push it away?
He could hear the noises in the outer room, noises he’d heard so many times before. His mother was entertaining another man, a perverted bastard that slapped her and cursed her and made her perform all sorts of indecent sexual acts. He didn’t think the man
even knew he was here hiding in this adjoining room. At least he didn’t have to watch like he’d done as a small child, or worse, share in the perversion.
He’d grown strong and fast and could protect himself now, and it had been a long time since one of the dirty men had turned his lusts on him. He was smart and he knew it, as did all of his teachers. So many of them had commented on how he’d turned out so well-balanced considering the environment in which he’d been raised. They all knew his mother. They knew what she was. Some of the teachers, the men teachers, had even called on her for her professional services.
Hypocrites and perverts, the lot of them.
His counselors made every effort to help him receive the attention and financial support he needed to further his education. He excelled in all of the sciences and math, so he spent most of his day at school or studying on his own at the library. He didn’t play any school sports. Instead he kept to himself, a loner unable or unwilling to make friends. He’d been accepted to college and medical school in the fall on full scholarships. Maybe now he’d be able to put his past behind him and move on with his life.
The teenager sat in the corner and listened to the creaking bed and to the groans of both her and the dirty man. It never lasted long, the sex anyway. There was always the confrontation about money versus services rendered, and very often there was drugs or alcohol involved.
Even though the sex only lasted a few minutes, the prelude to sex could last for an hour or two, depending on how much money the man was willing to pay and how many drugs he’d brought with him. It wasn’t unusual for him to find his mother so drunk or high on drugs that he’d have to carry her home. He suspected that was why she always insisted he accompany her to her ‘business appointments’ as she called them.
The bed in the outer room grew painfully quiet, followed by the slamming of a door. The boy peeked out through a door held barely ajar and saw his mother standing naked at a sink in the corner, a washcloth in her hand cleaning between her legs.
He felt his stomach churn and tasted bile rise in his throat. Her ebony, slender body moved to the rhythm of a ceiling fan that wobbled just out of balance.
She could have been such a beautiful woman if she’d only taken care of herself. But she’d ruined her looks long ago with drugs, alcohol, and sex. Now she was just a hollow shell, barely a hundred pounds of skin and bone. He could walk for miles with her in his arms and never break a sweat. He’d done it a number of times after a particularly hard night.
How many times had he carried her across the river bridge back to their tenement apartment? And how many times had he considered dropping her into the frigid water below?
“It’s time to go, Mother,” he said, stepping into the room.
She didn’t speak. She never spoke to him. She never even called him by his name. He was a mistake; an accident; a freak that heard voices in the night. He’d tried to tell her about the sinister man he saw in his dreams, but she wouldn’t listen. She didn’t care. It was as if he didn’t exist, yet she would never leave him alone. She smothered him with her very presence without ever being present. Instead, she just stood there in front of that sink, naked and nasty and not caring that she’d shamed herself for money with another man she didn’t know.
The boy felt the scalpel in his pocket. He wrapped his fingers around its cold handle. It felt right, as if it were an extension of his hand. He’d taken it from the science lab at school today. He didn’t know why he took it from the tray of the student on the next table over from him. He just knew he had to have it. He could return it tomorrow and no one would ever know it had been missing.
With the cold, sharp instrument in his hand, he approached his mother from behind. The closer he got to her the more he could smell the stench of her. He hated the cheap dollar store perfume she sprayed on her body trying to mask the odor of her perversions, and he hated the way she just stood there, exposed for the world and her little boy to see.
He saw in her eyes the reflection of all the years she’d dragged him to these places. He remembered the shame of watching her perform unspeakable acts of degradation on men, dirty men, that didn’t care about her. He felt the pain of being raped and abused, molested like he was nothing when they’d finish with her.
He reached his mother. Standing behind her, he wrapped his arms around her and held her close to him, pressing her naked body against his chest. Using his left forearm under her chin, he tilted her head back until he could look into her eyes. She didn’t protest. She just smiled at him and whispered something he didn’t understand.
She thinks this is affection, he thought. She thinks I’m one of her dirty men and that I’m trying to have my way with her.
In answer to his thoughts, she shifted her weight and caused her bare buttocks to brush against his groin.
Oh my God! She wants to have sex with me! She’s drunk or high on drugs and she thinks I’m one of her dirty men.
After holding her in his arms for a minute, and after forcing away the impulse to vomit, he placed his lips near her left ear.
“Mother,” he whispered, “do you believe in God?”
“Oh baby,” she said, her words slurred. “Why you wanna talk about that religious shit?”
“I’m not talking about religion, Mother. I’m talking about life. Do you believe there’s life after death, and that people pass from one reality to another to spend eternity with God? Do you believe there’s more to us than just our mortal bodies; that we go on to a higher form of life when we die? Do you believe in heaven and hell?”
“I suppose so, honey,” she answered, her voice low and seductive.
He could tell she was high on something. Why else would she be acting this way with her own son?
“I’ve never really given it much thought.”
Something dark and sinister inside of him spoke one word—kill. He didn’t know where the voice came from, and he didn’t know if he should obey it or not. He’d heard it before in his nightmares; a voice that spoke to him when he was alone or the most afraid. He heard it after being raped or abused by the dirty men. He heard it when he huddled in the dark, hiding from the demons in the night. It was as if a power from somewhere in the ethereal would take over his very being, giving him a purpose he didn’t understand and endow him with power he didn’t know he possessed.
She stood there against him, naked and suggestive, a wanton bitch without a soul. He doubted if there was any light in her at all. He’d been told that life is in the eyes, and that if you watch real close, you can see the soul leave a person upon death—religious mumbo-jumbo created to soothe the conscious of the sinful.
Still looking into her eyes, and with her head pulled back against his chest, the skin of her throat stretched tight he said, “Well, you should think about it, Mother. You’re about to find out.”
With one swift motion of his right hand, he drew the scalpel from left to right across her throat. The shock in her eyes was matched only by the arterial blood spurting from the open wound and spattering on the mirror. Bright red ribbons of oxygen rich blood flowed down the front of her nude body, covering her breasts, midsection, and pelvic areas, continuing on down her legs to pool on the floor.
She tried to scream but couldn’t. She squirmed and kicked and tried to break his grip but she was no match for his strength. He held her tight against him and watched her in the mirror as her life began to fade away. He paid particular attention to her eyes.
Everyone said life is in the eyes. If this is true, I want to see her essence leave her body.
He wanted to know for sure that she was dead and that she’d never disgrace him again.
When she finally stopped kicking and squirming, he laid the body of his dead mother on the floor. He used the scalpel to open her abdomen all the way from her pelvis to her chest cavity. He wanted to see if she really had a heart, the place where love is supposed to live. How could she have a heart and still have raised him the way she did? If there was even
one ounce of love in her, he wanted to find it.
He stepped back from her butchered body and looked at himself in the mirror. He was covered in blood; her blood. His hands were stained with the life source of the woman that had given him birth. Yet he felt no compassion for her, and he felt no remorse for having ended her life.
How many more women like her are out there; women that disgrace themselves? How many other little boys watch their mothers display themselves the way his mother had all these years? How many other little boys sit at the foot of a perverted bed, fearful of the men who pay their mothers for illicit favors? How many other little boys hide in closets and darkened rooms, haunted by voices in the night?
He looked around the dirty hotel room, one of many in this town. He’d leave her here and go home. No one knew he was here. Everyone knew he studied late at the library. Besides, it could take several days for anyone to find her and report her murder to the police.
It wouldn’t do any good to take her ID. Every cop in the district knew her. There was little chance they’d take her to the county morgue and declare her an unidentified Jane Doe and bury her in a pauper’s grave or cremate her remains at county expense. Then again, he doubted if the county would waste too many resources investigating the murder of a known prostitute, drunk, and drug abuser.
He didn’t care as long as he never had to look at her again. He knew there would be questions and he would have to cover his tracks. But he was free of her and ready to move on with his life. College awaited him in the fall, and from there his future was bright.
Chapter Forty
It didn’t take long for Benjamin and Cooper to realize their positions with the presidential motorcade wasn’t going to be a picnic. Just because the President was treated with kid gloves and pampered didn’t mean everyone was.
The first thing they learned was that they would have no contact with the President, not even when he was in the car. They weren’t allowed to speak to the President or even open a door for him. That was the Secret Service’s job. They were alternate drivers, nothing more. Any breach of protocol and they’d find themselves standing on the sidewalk.
